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Looking to the Future: 99U, Behance, and Adobe

Behance made an amazing announcement today: We will be joining forces with Adobe to empower creatives and their careers on an even grander scale.As many of you know, 99U is the education arm of Behance, where we research and share pragmatic, actionable advice on making ideas happen. So what does this mean for us.

The short answer is: Only good news.

As it has been since its inception, 99U will remain a key part of Behance’s mission, striving to deliver the “missing curriculum” for creative minds—all the stuff we don’t learn in school.

In this effort, we will be continuing to pursue the same ambitious goals we laid out earlier in 2012, which will include:

What’s more, our team will be pursuing these goals—and many more—with a new wind at our backs. Behance’s role within Adobe will increase our access to the creative community and provide new reach and resources that will allow us to take our mission even further.

I’m incredibly excited about the coming year, and all of the opportunities we’ll have to grow 99U. If we can help you get motivated on a rough day, spark a new approach to brainstorming, make better decisions, take smarter risks, or any other productive step that gets you closer to realizing your idea, I think we’re doing our job. (And it’s a fun job!)

Great news! I’m very excited to see more great results, insights, and content from your team in the next year.

Paul W Roberts

Enjoy the benefits of your labors…Adobe is Corp, you all seemed indy…

David McGuigan

Extremely disappointing news 😦 . I’m a fan of some of Adobe’s software but as a company they’re absolutely terrible and poison a lot of things they touch. The conference you guys put on last year was incredible, but I’m going to rest assured that this year it’s going to be heavily tainted by Adobe’s squeezing every cent out of every opportunity with no shame and kind of feel more like an interactive Creative Cloud commercial than a useful learning event. Fingers crossed that I’m wrong, but I’ve just seen Adobe do it so many times before. Hope it was worth the money.

Our new role at Adobe has been carefully structured to preserve Behance’s and 99U’s values and mission — so that we can carry on doing great work & serving the creative community. Ultimately though, we seek to show not tell, and I think all of the stuff we have planned for 99U in 2013 will do that.

With regard to the 99 Conference in particular, the event will continue to be a platform for learning — not promoting — and I’m incredibly excited about the way that the lineup for 2013 is coming together. Every year, myself and the team strive to outdo past performances, and I don’t think this year will be any different!

-Jocelyn // Director, 99U

99U

Hi Paul: Hopefully my response to David, above, will clarify how we intend to preserve our “indy” identity. As always, 99U will continue to dig into the nitty gritty of the creative process and come away with useful insights on how we can all push our ideas forward — in our online editorial, our live events, and beyond. Nothing’s changing there. Stick with us, and I think you’ll see that. -Jocelyn // Director, 99U

Haha, that felt like a commercial where someone was trying really hard to convince me that something I didn’t want to happen was happening for my own good. Did you guys just paste this part in or what?

“Adobe has made some bold changes lately, including (1) breaking the traditional software package model with Creative Cloud, an affordable subscription for Adobe’s creative tools and services, (2) the acquisition of Typekit as a big step forward in offering services that make the web better, (3) doubling down on HTML5, and (4) becoming a more active contributor to open source essentials like jQuery, PhoneGap and WebKit and developing new open source-based web tools and services that will evolve the web as we know it (http://html.adobe.com/). We’re thrilled to lead the next bold move: making community a central part of Adobe’s future. No doubt, the future of creative careers will depend on attribution and exposure for creative work, as well as tools to connect, learn, and get opportunity.”

Yikes.

That said, I want to believe you and I hope you live up to the ambition, but Adobe is extremely poorly run and the majority of the good things they buy turn to sh tragically quickly. Fingers crossed that you guys are an exception and can somehow dodge the crippling influence you’ll receive from your new owners. I hope you do.

Allan White

I guess what I am hopeful about is that the ideas I read about on 99U really have very little to do with tools. I’m sure funding and resources will help, provided 99U gets to keep its integrity; Adobe will benefit from a quality creative community.

If it becomes just another ad plaform, or the conferences devolve, then we all lose.